


Sweet, Sweet Agony

by VisionaryGalaxy



Series: A Thousand Futures of Me and You [68]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Don't copy to another site, Drabble, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Stephen Strange, M/M, Soulmates, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 20:59:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17926250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VisionaryGalaxy/pseuds/VisionaryGalaxy
Summary: Soulmates: A person you cannot walk away from easily. It is someone you can’t imagine being without, a person you believe is worth sticking with and fighting for.Cliché where your soulmate's last words are written on your arm.





	Sweet, Sweet Agony

**Author's Note:**

> My friend pointed out that while I've hinted at soul bonds, I haven't done a proper soulmate story yet so here it is ;)

_Soulmates: A person you cannot walk away from easily. It is someone you can’t imagine being without, a person you believe is worth sticking with and fighting for._

   That was the definition Tony’s mother whispered to him, with an unbearably lovestruck expression one night while tucking him in. She had lifted his small hand and twisted it until the words, scrawled in a messy, nearly unreadable script were face up between them. She had run a gentle finger over them, while Tony watched utterly entranced.

   “One day, you will find the love of your life. It won’t always be easy, but it will always be worth it. You will be happy and when you finally hear these words, you’ll know how beautiful your connection is.”

   Tony had been too young then, far to impressionable when it came to his mother’s romantic whims, to understand the cruel twist of the soul mark adorning his skin. It wasn’t until middle school, when the teacher looked over the small group of students and levelled them with a solemn gaze.

   The marks on his skin, the words, were those of his soul mate. Unfortunately, just like everyone else, he learned that they would be their _last_ words. Tony, along with every other boy and girl stared down at their marks, the constant companion that told them they were not alone, and realized how wasteful, how horrible this strange quirk of anatomy was.

   He had run his fingers over them, seeing them in a new light, and the behaviour of his parents over the years and he mourned. He mourned because those words, that took him forever to interpret, even with the help of his parents and two professionals, were that of someone whom Tony’s wasn’t sure he could ever deserve.

_Tony, there was no other way_

   Those six fucking words. He understood now, the way his mother would praise whoever his soulmate would one day be. The look in her eyes that was part grief for her son and part pride that whomever it was, sounded like a hero. Like he said, his mother was a romantic. Tony, on the other hand, had learned quickly not to be so disillusioned.

   He had wrapped up his forearm in a black silken piece of fabric, a common practice these days and was determined to put it from his mind. He refused to acknowledge it and found himself eagerly hitting up one-night stands and short-lived flings as he began college. This too was becoming common practice among young people, not seeing the point in the words promising the perfect person if you wouldn’t know it was them until the end.

   He remembered, not long before his parents would die, when it all came to a head. They were in the kitchen, trying and failing to have a civil family meal and his mother had been admonishing him for his escapades while his father watched on with his permanent disapproval.

   He had snapped, “stop it, just stop it! You say all these magical things about soulmates, and you claim they are so god damn wonderful, meanwhile you don’t even know if you two are? Like what’s the point? What are you going to do when one of you dies and you realize you aren’t?”

   “Tony!” his father’s angry tone made his jaw clench.

   Instead of apologizing for the hurt, pale expression on his mother’s face, he stood quickly and fled to his room, a storm of frustration and anger rising inside him. He didn’t feel regret until the day he stood over the twin bodies of his parents, laid out cold and bare on steel slabs in a generic and sterile room. He stared down at the words on their arms, Obadiah at his back, and felt something stir inside him, a sense of absolute certainty that it was what they said to one another in their last breaths.

   He filled the hole of bitterness and contempt with warm bodies and warmer boos. He invented and created to prove he was the only one in control of his destiny and every night, as he fell asleep, his mother’s words would echo in his mind, yet could still not sway him to try and find the one.

   That was not to say, everyone found their soulmate, it was a mathematical improbability with seven billion souls on this planet. It certainly didn’t help that you would never know if they were the one or you are wasting your time until you took, your last breath.

   Then a lot of things happened, and it became the last thing on his mind. For awhile anyway, because one day as he looked into Pepper’s familiar eyes, he swore he felt something, some small blip that maybe, just maybe she was the one.

   Tony was never one to do things halfway. He threw himself at her with all the force that was his admittedly, excitable personality. She was a powerhouse in her own right, and he was convinced there was no one else on this planet that could handle him like she could. Yet, with that certainty came an unexpected bout of fear. Couples rarely revealed their soul marks until well into marriage and he had no urge to see what adorned her arm.

   His own words, however, haunted him.

_Tony, there was no other way._

   He could practically feel the loss, the fading of something so god damn important and he felt himself sucked into a desperate whirlwind of inventing. He needed to keep her safe. It became more and more important with every threat that appeared from no where, every enemy that grew stronger. Academically, he knew the words didn’t necessarily mean she would die before him, in fact, given his career, he was more likely to be the first to go.

   But…he had learned over the years to trust his instinct. He sometimes got these…impressions. It was what told him there was something out there, a bigger threat then the attack on New York, then Ultron, their own damn feuds. It was looming and dark, taking up residence not only his dreams but between every beat of his heart. In the same way he knew it was coming, he knew that the words on his arm, were connected to that dreaded storm, brewing with painful disaster. He wouldn’t let it take Pepper, a vow he repeated day in and day out, even when she shook her head at him, and grew frustrated, even when she distanced herself.

   She didn’t understand. He didn’t know anyone else that got these feelings and he quickly stopped bringing it up when he received weary looks. It was fine, he was fine. He just had to take care of the threat and maybe, just maybe he could find out if his mother was right.

\---

   Everything Tony knew was blown to shit the moment Dr. Stephen Strange stepped out of a swirling orange portal, with his congratulations and doomsday tidings. The moment his eyes fell on the tall figure, his arm began to itch, something it wasn’t supposed to do. There was a pressure that seemed to squeeze the air out of him as though the particles and atoms themselves were trying to tell him something.

   He found himself in a dusty museum with creaky floors and dozens of old relics. He listened as Bruce explained the end of the world and he should have felt vindicated after all this time, but all he felt was a horrific sense of doom. Worse, he felt drawn to the tall sorcerer who was stubborn, unimpressed, and all around too alluring for his own good. He wished he could pretend that his heart didn’t stop when Stephen was dragged into the space ship, or that inexplicable tears didn’t prick his eyes when he heard him cry out in pain.

   It was one more problem Tony really didn’t need at the end of the world.

   Then of course everything had to fall apart in a horrific total of five minutes. He had to stare, frozen, into the blue-green eyes of a man who just gave his life for Tony’s as he said; “Tony, there was no other way.”

   His entire world collapsed into a tunnel in which those words echoed painfully through his head, as he stared incomprehensibly at the place where he faded into dust. His lungs burned, his arms ached, his entire body felt like the weight of the world had landed with a solid thud onto him and he couldn’t fucking _breathe._

   “Mr. Stark?”

   He gasped in pain, body swinging towards Peter’s familiar voice and it felt like it was himself who had just died a thousand times over.

\---

   “Tony, you just have to trust the universe to bring them to you.”

   His mother had always been endlessly patient with his persistent questions. He had been too young then, of course, to spot the lie in those words. The chances of stumbling upon your soulmate averaged around fifteen percent in a developed nation and thirty percent in overpopulated, undeveloped nations.

   He didn’t know that and enjoyed pestering her about exactly when he would be graced with his soulmate’s presence. He had been eager, caught up in the stories she would tell and in imagining himself simply being happy with a partner in crime. To this day he never understood her obsession, since her relationship to his father had been so damn average.

   But now, months later, sitting in his lab with a single beer, the only one a day he allowed himself, staring down at the words that had turned grey on his arm, he understood. He was still that stupid little child, so afraid of being lonely and unloved.

   He slept around because he thought the solution was to go numb, he ignored the mark because no love could be worth the pain of the eventual loss. He had dived headfirst and startling desperate into the relationship with Pepper without considering the facts. Like the most obvious; her careful script was nothing like the messy scrawl on his arm.

   A doctor’s scrawl, a broken and reconstructed scrawl.

   He wondered if the universe thought it was funny. All this time of being afraid and they give him his soulmate only to drag him away within hours. He had been right, the marks were cruelty incarnate, designed to make you suffer and in his case, do so without the promise of happiness.

_Tony, you just have to trust the universe._

   Thing is…Tony has never been very good at trust. He had gotten better over the years to be sure, but if there was one thing he never, absolutely never, put his trust in, it was the universe, or destiny, or cosmos. He had always preferred to make his own luck, because leaving things to chance was never in his favour. Add to that a stubborn streak a mile wide and the determination of a man who lost everything in one foul swoop and well…the universe had better watch its fucking back.

\---

   It took seven months. Seven long months of the people around him mourning, seven months of him building and planning. Seven months until Tony finally, finally, found himself standing back on Titan, in the exact spot and ready, so fucking ready to tell the universe to go fuck itself.

   First came Peter, trembling and pale. Luckily the kid was nothing if not adaptable and he was quickly rattling off excited questions. He pushed him off on Quill who appeared equally stunned. He waited, while the others hovered on the ship, prepared.

   His arm sensed it first. Stephen, the drama queen, had taken twice as long as everyone else and just before he flickered into existence once more, Tony watched as the words on his arm turned from grey, into its rich black.

   When Stephen finally appeared, he was the only one not dazed and Tony couldn’t help but grin when the first thing out of his mouth was, “Stark, about time you got it working.”

   Referring to the smaller gauntlet on his hand. Tony could have cried, the sound of his deep baritone voice settling firmly in his brain, the sound of his soulmate. Stephen tilted his head to the side, clearly confused by his silence.

   “You alright Stark?”

   He nodded still smiling, “just peachy. You know a thanks would be nice.”

   He snorted and stood, the Cloak seemingly clinging to its master, obviously more shook up then the man himself, “you couldn’t have done it without me.”

   He was right. Tony guided everyone to the ship and the elation he felt as he argued and bantered with Stephen the whole way home was akin to heaven. He had been to hell, felt its fire burn his skin and the torture of his soul, so he knew this moment was the height, the furthest up he could fly.

   Stephen ran off to the Sanctum almost immediately after landing and that was fine. Tony needed to take care of Peter and half a dozen other emergencies that were bound to happen, he had every intention of making it up later.

\---

   It proved incredibly easy. He found Stephen in the Sanctum not ten days later, where he was diligently researching what appeared to be some very old and dusty scrolls. Even just seeing the man in the flesh, talking, and walking, was enough to make him breathe easier.

   “Figured you’d show sooner or later,” he didn’t even look up from where he sat at the desk.

   “Oh really? Inflated sense of self-importance there?”

   He did look up then, a slow smile spreading across his lips, “yes actually. I’d think a soulmate would be a little more important then your average acquaintance.”

   He stared at him dumbly. All this time and he hadn’t even considered the fact that Stephen would have had _his_ words on his arm. To be fair, most of the people he returned could barely remember the hour before their death on a whole and he expected no different from Stephen…but then he should know better, the man was extraordinary.

   Stephen saw his shock and rolled his eyes, “come here.”

   He went mechanically, the command enough to get him moving until he had rounded the desk and was standing in front of his chair, within touching distance, “sorry, just caught of guard.”

   “Yeah I got that.”

   Stephen’s hand reached out and took his, the trembling feeling so right that it took Tony’s breath away. He stood, the smallest of smiles on his face as his other hand slid up to cup Tony’s cheek and he paused, waiting quietly.

   Tony didn’t hesitate, he had fought for this for seven months straight and he’d be damned if he waited another minute. He surged forward, his own free hand sliding into the taller man’s hair to tug him down and into a hard kiss.

   Stephen responded just as eagerly, deepening it and opening to him immediately, allowing Tony’s to explore his mouth. It was perfect, it was like all the bedtime stories his mom liked to tell, so incredibly right and righteously heartbreaking, as his arm began to burn.

   He pulled away, already going to raise his hand, but Stephen tightened his grip on it, “don’t look,” he whispered. “Not yet.”

   Tony decided to take the advice, going back to kissing this man before him. They would both be receiving new marks now, the words that would be spoken to one another before their next deaths. He would have to memorize them and learn to control the terror of knowing.

   Yet, for whatever reason, he found he preferred this kind of sweet, sweet agony. They were the only two people in the world that knew they were soulmates, who knew that the words spoken on their deathbeds were meant for each other.

   Soul marks, depicting the last words were a cruel twist of anatomy indeed and Tony supposes that he had never been one to accept such things passively. As he held Stephen in his arms, he couldn’t help but wonder, what his mother knew that he didn’t. How she would sound so certain that he would find them, how she knew Stephen would be a hero, why she told him to trust the universe when she knows Tony would do anything but.

_Soulmate: A person you cannot walk away from easily. It is someone you can’t imagine being without, a person you believe is worth sticking with and fighting for._

   Tony wishes he could have told her she was right all along.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and Kudos are always appreciated!


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